Author: Melissa Pennel

How to Get Through Your Darkest Days: Lessons from Addiction and Loss

“You are never stronger…than when you land on the other side of despair.” ~Zadie Smith

In the last years of my twenties, my life completely fell apart.

I’d moved to Hollywood to become an actor, but after a few years in Tinsel Town things weren’t panning out the way I hoped. My crippling anxiety kept me from going on auditions, extreme insecurity led to binge eating nearly every night, and an inability to truly be myself translated to a flock of fair-weather friends.

As the decade wound to a close, I stumbled upon the final deadly ingredient in my toxic lifestyle: opiates. A few small pills prescribed for pain unlocked a part of my brain I didn’t know existed: a calm, confident, and numb version of myself that seemed way more manageable than the over-thinking mind-chatter I was used to.

At first the pills were like a casual indulgence—I’d pop a few before a nerve-wracking audition or first date, the same way other people might have a few drinks before going out on the town. But my casual relationship to opiates was short-lived: soon the pills were no longer reserved for awkward dates or nerve-wracking auditions, and instead necessary for any type of outing or interaction.

I knew I’d crossed an invisible line when I began to feel sick without a “dose” of medication. The physical pain they’d been prescribed for had long subsided, but they’d created a need that only grew with more use. Soon I became sick if I didn’t take any pills, which is when I began going to any lengths to get more.

I wanted so much to stop but felt trapped on a terrible ride: I’d wake hating myself for what I’d done the day before, and with deep shame I’d vow earnestly to quit—then afternoon would come and with it, withdrawal symptoms. As my stomach would turn and my head would spin, I’d lose the resolve to stop and begin searching for my next fix. With that fix would come a few hours of relief, followed by another cycle of self-loathing, a vow to quit, and more failure.

It was a spin cycle that likely would have killed me had life not intervened in ways that at the time felt devastating; in a span of two weeks my “normal” façade collapsed and, with it, most pillars in my life. Like a house of cards toppling, I lost my job, car, relationship, and was evicted from my home.

It felt like a cliché country song where the singer loses everything, except in those songs that person is usually likeable and innocent—but in my story, I felt like the villain.

As I watched my entire life crumble around me, I felt no choice other than to return home and seek the shelter of the only person who had always been there for me—my mom.

The mom who had raised me with morals like honesty, accountability, and kindness, although I hadn’t been living them for a while. The mom who had struggled raising two kids alone, gotten us off food stamps by going to nursing school, and who watched helplessly as I descended into the same cycle of addiction that had taken the life of my father.

She told me I could stay if I was sober; I vowed to try, though I’d stopped believing my own promises long before.

In the recovery program I found soon after, there was an oft repeated saying on every wall: “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” If taken literally, it makes you think about how dark the night sky is before dawn breaks… how heavy, looming, and consuming. Before the light returns, it can feel like the darkness will never end.

That was how my early days sober felt.

But as I cobbled together a few weeks and then a few months, I began to feel the faintest bit of trust in myself. Through abstinence and therapy, mindfulness and a sober community, the hopelessness that had seemed so all-consuming began to crack open and let in some light.

I moved out into my own apartment, returned to school to complete a long-sought college degree, and had a waitressing job that I loved. Then, just after I achieved one year sober, I got a phone call from my brother that would change everything.

“Melissa, you need to come home,” he said, his voice thick with tears. “It’s mom.”

My stomach dropped as I gripped the phone, suddenly feeling about five years old. I’d find out later it was a heart attack.

I felt the darkness descend again.

—

In the days that followed her death I felt like a dependent child that was unable to care for myself. I dragged myself through brushing my teeth, dressing, and arranging her funeral; it felt like my heart had stopped along with hers.

The same thought kept circling the drain of my head—how can I live the rest of my life without my mother?

I couldn’t imagine not having her at my graduation, wedding, or when I became a parent. Her disappearance from my future brought up a dread much worse than that of the previous year— but as I began to settle into my grief, I realized I had a path through this moment, if I were willing to take it.

The tools I’d forged in sobriety would prove to be useful in the dark days that followed. I share them below as an offering for anyone who travels through a dark night of the soul: simple steps to keep in mind when you can’t see a path forward.

Take things one day at a time.

In sobriety, you learn that imagining your whole life without another drink or drug can be so daunting that you just give up and get loaded. So instead of borrowing future worry, you learn to stay in the week, the day, and the moment.

I didn’t have to know what having a wedding without my mother would be like—I just needed to eat breakfast. I didn’t need to imagine my graduation—I just needed to get myself through one more class. As I pieced my future together one moment at a time, I found that I could handle the emptiness in bite size pieces. I didn’t have to figure it all out—I just had to keep going.

Allow feelings to come and trust that they will go.

Much of what I’d been running from as an addict was the discomfort of my feelings. I didn’t want to feel rejection, so I contorted myself to be liked; I didn’t want to feel sadness, so I busied myself with the next activity. In recovery I learned that we can run from feelings all we want, but eventually they catch up to us in some form. Instead of running I’d learned to allow; instead of busying myself I’d been taught to turn toward pain and trust that it wouldn’t last forever.

Though this was easier said than done, some part of me knew that running from the grief of my mom’s death would only snowball into a freight train later. I’d scream in my car as I seethed with the unfairness of it all; I’d rock with sobs on my couch when the sadness became too much. It wasn’t pretty and it felt terrible, but when I let the grief shake through me. I found that there would always be an end… that at the bottom of my spiral a thread of mercy would appear, and I would be able to go on.

Tell the truth.

From a young age, I felt much more comfortable in a mask of smiles and jokes than sharing how I was actually doing at any given moment. Though getting sober had helped me shed layers of the mask, I still found myself trying to likeable, approved-of, and “good.” But as grief zapped my energy and ability to make myself palatable, when people asked how I was doing I started to be honest.

Sharing the pain I felt after my mom’s death was like standing naked in the middle of the street—I wasn’t used to crying in front of people and didn’t think they’d like me when they found out I wasn’t always “fun and easy going.” But it was exactly this type of vulnerability that allowed true friends to materialize, old connections to deepen, and the support I longed for to appear.

Allow yourself to be forever changed.

In recovery from addiction, I began to think of my sobriety date as a second birthday—the start of an actual new life. Though the way my former life had burned to the ground was painful, I welcomed the chance for a new start.

But when my mom died, I didn’t realize that losing her would again scatter me into a thousand unrecognizable pieces—pieces I kept trying to fit back together but weren’t ever going to be the same, because I wasn’t.

Once I allowed my life, relationships, and priorities to be changed by my grief, I found a self that was stronger, more resilient, and somehow more tender. I never would have chosen the form of this lesson, but I came through these experiences a more authentic version of myself… an overarching goal of my life.

*

It’s now been seven years since my mom’s death, and I’ve been sober for eight. As my journey continues to unfold, I never lose sight of how broken I once was and how dark things seemed. I also know that the struggles of life aren’t over; they’re part of being human and living a full life.

But something I now keep in mind is that it’s always darkest before the dawn—I know I don’t have to always see the light…

I just have to keep going.

February 28, 2021
How to Enjoy Social Media and Stop Comparing Your Life to Others

“You never know what someone is going through. Be kind, always.” ~Unknown

A few months back I was at the park and passed a family taking what looked like holiday photos.

The mom’s hair was perfectly coifed, dad was nicely shaven and looking quite dapper, and four kids stood smiling between them—all wearing matching khaki and surprisingly clean white shirts.

I watched the khaki family out of the corner of my eye as I pushed a stroller along the gravel trail, thinking of what their holiday post might say as my baby yodeled her displeasure at facing the sun.

“Kayden is already reading!” I imagined the post beginning. “And Kenzy, Kyra, and Kourtney are now fluent in both Spanish AND Portuguese.”

I giggled to myself as I imagined how the post would go on to detail news of the family travels, the dad’s promotion, and the non-profit the mom had started to benefit children in Siberia. I was checking all the boxes of an Instagram perfect share when my thought stream was interrupted by a piercing scream and some serious commotion.

I looked over to see a khaki child being hauled out of the park’s pond by a now-not-so-dapper looking dad; mom was screaming and holding her white skirt above the mud as the other three kids threatened to join the first, who was now most definitely not clean.

The photographer didn’t seem to know what to do, backing away from the deteriorating situation with a frozen smile and look of terror.

I was far enough away that the scene didn’t involve me, but when I saw the mom break down in sobs I immediately had a stab of guilt: they aren’t some picture perfect social media fantasy, they’re just a regular family with regular emotional breakdowns like all of us have.

My own baby started screaming as I stole one more glance over my sunglasses—this is the stuff you don’t see on social media, I thought. This is the stuff between the posts.

**

It’s important to remember all that doesn’t get shared on social media because otherwise we forget just how very human everyone else’s lives are too.

With the advent of social sharing came the construction of an alternate universe, and the ability to create two-dimensional characters that don’t always match our actual lives.

This sounds quite devious, but it’s not really our fault because social media wasn’t designed to be a play-by-play realistic depiction of who we are. Many refer to it as the “highlight reel” for a reason: most of us aren’t documenting our every moment, as evidenced by how few pictures you see of couples fighting or people picking their noses while staring at a screen.

It’s easy to forget that the aforementioned moments are just as common in many of our lives as the smiling, witty, or thoughtful posts you likely see populating your feed (or even sharing yourself.)

Even as someone who takes great care to be as honest and transparent online as possible, I can still recognize the chasm between my online avatar and my actual human life. Sometimes I’m thoughtful but sometimes I’m crass; sometimes I’m witty and sometimes I stare at a picture for an hour trying to come up with the perfect caption that seems off-the-cuff and effortless.

And even as I recognize this gap between my online and actual self, I can forget that its true for other people as well—I have to consciously remind myself that other people (who may appear quite together and “perfect”) are also living very human, flawed, and sometimes boring lives.

I know its easy to fall into the comparison game or to simply feel isolated (especially in times like the present, when so much of our lives are lived on a two-dimensional screen.)

It’s for this reason I share with you some tips to cultivating a more positive relationship with social media—and more importantly, a healthy relationship with yourself.

1. Remember that these are highlights, not reality.

Though many of us try to be honest online about our imperfect lives, we still can’t possibly bring every fact about our reality to the screen (nor should this necessarily be the intention.) Not every emotion needs an audience, and its not always safe or necessary to bring all of our lives to the public sphere: but when scrolling through pictures of smiling faces and happy families, its important that we (the social media consumer) remember that we’re seeing a highlight reel, not the “real” reel.

2. Be yourself.

This one sounds obvious, but its easy to put so many filters or edits onto our lives that we stop feeling like our actual selves.

For example, years ago someone told me that I posted “too much” and I believed them; I decided to scale back my online presence in order to stop overwhelming the feed. I wouldn’t interact on social media for weeks at a time, trying to create this appearance of detachment and busy-ness: like I was simply too busy living life to interact online (when really I was totally still there I just didn’t want anyone else to think I was too much.)

It was at this point that I began to hate social media and the people on it, and though at first, I blamed the platforms, I realized soon after that it was my relationship to them that was making me feel terrible.

Once I realized it was because of who I thought I needed to be (or more importantly, who I thought I couldn’t be online—myself) I decided that I was done letting other people dictate who I was. I went back to interacting with friends, sharing articles I found interesting, and commenting on all the posts that my heart desired.

This lightened me up to connect with people as my “real” self, turned off the “right” people who thought I was too much, and also helped me to like social media again. I found out that the energy had been coming from within me all along.

3. Recognize the differences between you and your online persona.

Whenever I start to compare my insides to other people’s outsides, I think about all the (accidental) differences there have been in my own social media posts and my actual life.

For example, I took an amazing international trip a few years back that had me sleeping at the base of volcanos in Iceland and hiking to the top of green hillsides in Scotland.

The pictures and memories I shared were mostly smiles and beautiful landscapes—I didn’t, however, detail my huge anxiety about driving in another country, or the tense moments between a close friend and I as we crammed ourselves into a camper van and tried not to snap at one another each cold morning. These omissions weren’t devious: they were simply not the moments I chose to share with other people. Similarly, it’s important to remember that other people are not sharing their full story with us either.

4. Periodically check out of the online world and into your five senses.

Sometimes I look up and realize that I’ve been scrolling mindlessly on my phone for way too long. I recognize these moments because I somehow end up three years deep into the online album of a person whom I’ve not seen for twenty years (or have never actually met in real life.)

It’s moments like these that have had me swearing off social media all together: after all, why waste precious moments of life staring at other people’s timelines that have nothing to do with me?

But I’ve found that this “all or nothing” approach isn’t sustainable for me either, because the truth is that I truly like connecting with people online—when I’m not mindlessly scrolling down rabbit holes, it’s really fun to check in with my friends and interact with the many people I’ve connected with virtually.

The answer I’ve found is to balance my online interaction with my real-life day.

I make it a practice to set a timer when I’m about to get on social media; finishing my scrolling or comments before the buzzer goes off becomes a game that I play with myself. And if I find myself feeling bad as I look at other people’s posts, I take that as a signal to sign off and look at “where my feet are.” As in: where am I standing, what can I see, hear, or touch?

Checking in with my five senses gives me an idea of what’s real in my life, which gives me a space to decide if interfacing with the two-dimensional world is going to serve me at that moment or in that day. Though sometimes the answer is yes, the space to decide what serves us and doesn’t is the one from which we can enjoy social media interaction.

5. Imagine your favorite celebrity constipated.

Okay, I know that one’s a little crass, but bear with me here: Anybody that seems to have a perfect life is actually still a human just like you and me, with moments of definite imperfection at the same frequency.

Yes, they might have great filters or a house that’s been featured on “lifestyles of the rich and famous”, but I guarantee that they too sometimes sit around picking their nose, have been heartbroken at one point or another, and likely have people that they watch longingly (and with a sense of comparison) as well.

I’ll never forget happening into a group of very wealthy friends when I was young, and then being astonished at the ways they jealously compared themselves to even wealthier people. I was amazed at the houses and bank accounts they took for granted, while they told me about being made fun of in their privileged school for not having a garage full of antique cars or their own yacht, like some other (wealthier) classmates.

As I scooped my jaw up off the floor I was forced to realize that there is no end to comparison, whether it be in real life or online: the key is to take some deep breaths, recognize all that we already have to be grateful for, and then remember just how similar our humanity is beneath the fancy filters and thoughtful captions.

Everyone is doing the best they can—and this looks different online for different people. We are only responsible for what it looks (and feels) like in our world.

**

I hope the khaki family got a picture for their holiday card that day in the park, or that maybe they traded their perfectly posed smiles for some muddy and imperfect shots of real life. I got distracted with my own screaming baby and didn’t see how their shot turned out, but I’m sure that whatever happened, it didn’t all end up online. When I finally calmed my own daughter down, we lay belly up in the grass and I decided to snap a photo.

“So grateful,” I captioned the post, looking at our happy faces beaming back at me from the land of social media. “And constipated,” I added with a smile, loading my daughter back into the car for our trip back home to our perfectly imperfect and very real, actual, life.

June 25, 2020
How to Appreciate Life (Even During a Global Pandemic)

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can find a number of helpful coronavirus resources and all related Tiny Buddha articles here.

“Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.” ~John Lennon

When I was in my late twenties I went on a trip with my mom and brother to Scotland.

Though I was a bit trepidatious about spending so much time with my family, I was excited for the trip too. When it finally arrived, I couldn’t wait to see the gorgeous Highlands, tour ancient castles, and eat endless amounts of shortbread. When we got there, I did exactly that, and it was incredible.

But though I loved my mom to the moon and back, like many parent-child relationships, she also got on my nerves a lot. As the trip progressed, I found myself annoyed at how many pictures she took, her repetition of the same stories, and how late she’d sleep (and snore) in the mornings while I itched to get out exploring.

Lack of contact with my friends and a lack of personal space from my family had me crawling out of my skin with impatience and frustration.

I’d listen to Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now each morning as I drank my coffee; his reminders to stay present in the moment (the “now”) reminded me it was pointless to “argue with reality” and wish I wasn’t where I was. But inevitably, by the end of the day I found myself counting the sleeps until I got to fly home and sink back into normal life.

What I couldn’t have known on that trip was that my mom would die of a heart attack mere months after getting back to the states. The pictures she was so bent on taking every five minutes would be her last few captures of earth; the conversations we had over hotel breakfasts would be some of our last mother-daughter interactions.

I couldn’t have known it at the time, but I’d soon ache for her repetitive stories, miss shoving the pillow over my ears as she snored, and long for a “do over” of certain moments where I acted like a brat.

In the years since she’s been gone (and through a lot of self-work) I’ve forgiven myself for being human and wishing my time on that trip away—but that experience taught me that we can never take time, life, or the people in it for granted.

Though it’s easy to forget, life is always only happening in the present, and good old Eckhart Tolle is still right when he reminds me (repeatedly) of the power of now.

But however well I learned this lesson after my mom’s death, this feeling of wanting to fast forward into the future is one I’m noticing a lot lately, both in myself and the culture as a whole.

The Coronavirus pandemic has caused many normal parts of life to screech to a halt, and it sort of feels like life itself is actually halted too. After all, for those lucky enough to not be ill (or have ill loved ones), the changes to daily life seem like a giant “pause” button has been pressed on our world—like we’ve stepped into some dystopian movie.

When will I be able to go back to work?

When will we know that the curve has flattened?

When will I feel safe in a crowd again?

When will this be over?

When we watch those dystopian movies, we know that eventually we’ll be able to get up from the movie theater, throw our popcorn bucket away, and continue with regular life.

But this current version of the world isn’t a movie: it is real life, and though it feels anything but normal, there’s no one holding a giant remote keeping us on pause. Though the roads are empty and the grocery shelves bare, the calendar pages still fly by and each day that passes is one of a limited number we each have in life.

If losing my mom unexpectedly taught me anything, it’s that I don’t want to wish life away, even when things feel bleak, overwhelming, or downright scary. Life is happening right now, and there are ways we can continue to live it while still holding space for the surrealness of it all.

In the spirit of being present with what is and making friends with even an uncomfortable reality, I offer you some tried and true steps for staying present with life—whatever it may be bringing.

1. Start your day intentionally

In the most normal of circumstances it’s tempting to start the day by grabbing our phones, and in the midst of a pandemic it can feel almost responsible to check the news at the crack of dawn. But unless we’re actually headed out the door at the very moment our feet hit the ground, there’s no reason to make a screen (or the news and opinions on it) the first thing that we see.

Starting our day with things outside our immediate reality can introduce panic, anxiety, and a frightening picture of what the future day or week might hold.

Before interfacing with the world, I’ve found that spending at least a half hour with just myself (and the family right in front of me) can ground me in the present and equip me with the foundation to face what’s going on elsewhere.

Within this time, I imagine how I want my day to go: How do I want to feel, respond, or show up to whatever happens? Yes, imagining the day ahead involves leaving the present—but in a way that lays a foundation of protection for each future moment that the day will bring.

2. Check in with what’s real

What’s actually real to me right now? Not what’s on the news, not what I wish were happening, but what is right in front of me?

I do this by asking myself: How am I feeling physically, emotionally, spiritually? I babble with my baby and “talk” to her about what I see, hear, smell, taste, and feel.

Though it is responsible to stay informed about community guidelines and general advisories about the current pandemic, checking in with our senses and what is truly real in our world can keep us from zooming forward into the imagined dystopian future.

3. Take off the productivity pressure and slow down

Regular life is often filled with lots of rushing: rushing to work, dropping the kids off, walking the dog, or getting that “thing” accomplished and behind you. Being quarantined has abruptly cut off much of that “hustle” mentality, but we sneaky humans find ways to hold onto our comforting (if unhealthy) habits.

One of those habits is the tendency to stay busy. During this “stay at home order” I’ve seen a productivity push emerge: a pressure to take this time to learn, create, accomplish, perfectly schedule your children, organize community initiatives, and do it all without physical support from your regular village.

If you’ve got the bandwidth to use this time in a “productive” way that feels good, more power to you— there’s nothing wrong with accomplishing when it comes from a place of inspiration or power. But if, like many of us, you’re struggling to do even the smaller tasks in life right now, I encourage you to reject this push for productivity and lean into the slowness that this time has created.

If it’s tougher than usual to get ready for the day, practice noticing everything about what getting ready for the day entails: “Right now I’m combing my hair, now I’m feeding the dog, now I’m getting into the shower.”

As you notice (and say) what you’re actually doing, allow yourself to just be doing that thing—not shaming yourself over the language you’re not learning or wondering why working from home isn’t as smooth as you thought it might be.

Leaning into slowness, noticing and staying with every individual action taken, and giving yourself permission to be overwhelmed (and likely slower than usual) is a key to staying present with life exactly as it is right now.

4. Be a time traveler

During the Scotland trip, I wasn’t particularly grateful for my mom, because being with her felt so normal: after all, I’d never not lived in a world with her in it. Now, however, I’d be so grateful to wake up to her snoring or to hear her re-tell the same story about Buford the run-away cow.

Because I’ve lost her, I realize how precious the time I had with my mom was—and the sobering but truest fact about life (in even the best of times) is that we will eventually lose everything.

Everything will someday be rendered precious, because the nature of our lives is impermanence. Though I doubt any of us will miss the fear or heartbreak of this pandemic, we just might miss the extra time with our family, the unique ways people have been kind to each other, or the incredible global connection we’ve experienced by going through the same thing at the same time as every other human on the planet.

Kind of like how we might be envious of our former selves that (mere months ago) were going to basketball games and brushing up against people in sweaty yoga classes, our future selves might someday miss these strange times, if only because we hunkered down and spent them with people who are no longer in our lives, or parenting children who are now grown and out of the house.

***

Though the experiences are decidedly different, I see some parallels between the sudden death of my mother and the current moment in time.

After my mom died, I kept trying to gather pieces of myself and fit them back together: I was waiting for the day that things would feel normal again. But my relationships, goals, and every thought going forward felt different…because I was.

Similarly, when the world, our communities, and individual lives return to what one might call normal, these things likely won’t feel the same. Our world will now be different because we are.

But rather than grasping at the familiar of yesterday or projecting into an imagined tomorrow—I hope you’ll join me in holding space for the mourning, destruction, and transformation that’s happening both collectively and within each one of us.

Yes, things are difficult at present, but as the great Ram Dass said, let’s be here now.

This—right now—is our life, and while we still have the choice, let’s decide each day how we’d like to live it.

April 23, 2020
When Someone I Respected Violated My Trust…

“This above all: to thine own self be true.” ~William Shakespeare

Though I appeared pretty high-functioning and what you might call “normal” as a kid, I was a ball of self-doubt and insecurity from an early age.

Overthinking, scrutinizing my actions, and generally worrying about what people thought came as naturally to me as breathing. Life felt like a great balancing act between who I thought I should be and who I actually was—and it was pretty exhausting.

You can imagine my relief when, while browsing for a textbook in the library at eighteen, I discovered the self-help genre (and in it, a new world.)

I can still remember sinking into a library chair and becoming engrossed in a story that was unlike anything I’d ever read. This book was about a woman and her short-lived love story, which on its surface is the oldest idea in the literal book, except this story was different.

This woman had fallen in love, basked in the glow of finding her ideal partner, and then found that the entire time she’d done so he was cheating on her.

While I expected her to rage, sob, and generally discount the whole relationship as a farce, she described an entirely different process that felt revolutionary to me at the time. She wrote about how after raging and sobbing and feeling the betrayal, she realized that she’d still had an incredible time being in love.

While he had never been real with her, the love she felt had been real—which meant it had originated within her (and not from him) all along. She was grateful, empowered, and absolutely blowing my mind with her interpretation of the situation.

You mean… we can decide how to interpret the events of our life? As someone who’d always thought that things were clearly good or bad, I was intrigued by the idea of another truth.

And though my life was anything but smooth in the years that followed, I carried this seed of an idea with me, as well as a steadfast love for self-work. Throughout each leg of my wildly fluctuating life journey I brought along various modes of self-development tools—tools that I believed would lead me to freedom.

The thing about tools like self-awareness, reflection, and communing with other seekers is that they can lead us to freedom. Taking ownership of our lives, agency over our stories, and employing the earnest work of improving our well-being regardless of what has happened to us is the stuff of literal miracles.

It’s changed my life, I’ve seen it change others, and I don’t want to live in a world that doesn’t involve self-reflection, reinterpretation, and the divinely-sprinkled-perspective-shifting-magic that can scoop people out of their misery and into fantastic lives.

But self-improvement tools can also be misused.

Much like we humans are complex combinations of darkness and light, the way we employ self-help tools on ourselves (and others) can be a similar mixed bag.

This subject is one that all of us “self-work” lovers and practitioners must reckon with at some point: Where is the line between taking responsibility for our perceptions, and having a valid response when important boundaries are violated?

How do we refrain from “spiritual bypassing” or glossing over real issues in ourselves and others?

I recently experienced a great example of this boundary in my own life, one that blindsided me but also reminded me how important it is to ask these questions.

It began a few months back when I decided it was time to level-up my entrepreneurial game and employ the skill of a highly respected and successful business coach.

Her price tag was high, but so was my commitment to unlearning many of the stories that had been keeping me stuck—so I splurged and purchased six months of coaching (twenty-four sessions at one hour each) for a large upfront sum.

I was amazed at how serious I got about my own self-work after spending this sum of money. Yes, the coaching was expensive, but that hefty price tag was helping me to be laser focused in our sessions and in my life.

Throughout our months of work together I also forged the deep bond of trust and support that’s necessary when working with a healer or coach: We must truly believe that our insecurities, doubts, and vulnerability are being held in a safe space. I felt that safety—and the magical container for growth it created.

The impetus of our work together involved the same seed of an idea I’d first read about in the library at eighteen: It’s not so much the events of our lives that make up who we are, but the stories we tell about them. It’s our thoughts (and the feelings and actions they create) that can either build our dream castles or our inner prisons.

Thoughts create our lives, but it was also my thoughts that this coach eventually used against me.

Three months into our work together she sent me an email one morning before our session.

“Our sessions will be changing from one hour to forty-five minutes, effective immediately.”

There would be no cost adjustment, additional sessions, or explanation of why she’d made this change. I did the math and realized that cutting 25% from each session would eliminate almost five total sessions from our initial and already paid in full agreement.

I was floored.

Her email continued: “You may have some thoughts about this. Thoughts like: ‘But that wasn’t our original agreement’ or ‘that’s not the same value.’ I encourage you to coach yourself and examine where these thoughts are coming from.”

I felt my anger begin to rise and realized that yeah, I had some thoughts.

She is not trustworthy.
She is taking advantage of me.
Financial coaches are all scheming and greedy.

The thoughts that came up from this interaction weren’t new: they were the offspring of stories I’d been telling myself for my entire life.

People can’t be trusted.
They’ll take advantage of you.
Financially successful people are scheming and greedy.

Recognizing and detaching from these limiting stories has been the greatest catalyst for my own growth and a huge reason that my work with this coach had been successful. I’d realized that they weren’t “truth” but only thoughts.

How then, was I to make sense of what felt like a clear breach of ethical boundaries couched in my old “thought” stories? How was I to sort through this issue with someone who knew my stories and could use them against me?

“Melissa, we know that it’s merely your thoughts about this situation because other clients of mine have had a positive response,” she told me as I questioned her that night. “Our change in session length is a neutral circumstance.”

The more she convinced me to question my judgment of the situation, the more I felt a rising of clarity within and the appearance of a boundary. Thoughts, stories, and circumstantial neutrality went out the window. This was my line in the sand. I ended our coaching relationship that night.

I’ve since continued to unpack my interpretation of the situation, and continually return to something that all of us intent on self-help should keep in mind: Regardless of what wonderful tools and treatment models we may employ toward our healing, there is only one tool that we can always rely on to guide, lead, and help us to discern our own “right” from “wrong”: developing our own inner guide.

It’s leaning into our intuition—the deeper knowing beneath our stories.

Ultimately, the most powerful tool in life is cultivating a strong trust in self.

We can read all the books, take all the courses, employ the best healers and coaches and mentors—but the core teaching from all these modalities should ultimately strengthen the trust we are building in ourselves.

If we never decided where our boundaries are (and looked at, say, an abusive relationship as merely a “neutral circumstance” about which we have “negative” thoughts) we’d never achieve the healing and transformation that most of us are seeking in the first place.

We need discernment as individuals. We need to believe some thoughts.

And ultimately, the best coaches, teachers, and mentors should be leading us to be a person who doesn’t need to rely on them to form an opinion. They should be showing us what we are truly capable of within ourselves.

But how do we trust ourselves amidst the nuance of not just the self-help world, but life in general?

How do we discern our own voice from that of people we love, respect, and even the trusted professionals we pay for guidance?

Though cultivating trust in ourselves is a lifelong process, there are tools that we can employ to feel in touch with our inner guide today. I turned to these that day with my coach, and I offer them to you in hopes that they’ll bring you closer to your own reliable inner guide.

1. Look in the rearview mirror.

Most of us have had to make big and difficult decisions before. Maybe it was ending a relationship, leaving a job, or even choosing how to care for someone at the end of their life. While we may have consulted with other people about these choices, at the end of the day we made them ourselves.

Somehow, we sifted through the noise of other people’s opinions and found a deeper knowing within. Reflecting on these moments in our past is a way to make salient the inner guidance we all already have. Though being open to “thought work” can sometimes feel like we’re open to throwing out opinions, the rearview mirror of life shows a bedrock of consistent and strong intuition.

2. Return to your body.

Each of us was given a primal and invaluable gift the day we were born: an animal body. This body can feel tense around some people and relaxed around others. It can tell us not to get into a sketchy elevator or to eat more of that nutritious and healing food.

Becoming “embodied” doesn’t have to be esoteric: It can involve the simple act of going for a walk, doing something physical, or paying attention to how and where we feel things in our bodies. Though our cognitive abilities can make things appear quite complex, these bodies of ours are much wiser than we give them credit for.

3. Practice meditation.

When we spend time watching our thoughts it gives us a chance to practice not identifying with them. Becoming aware of inner critics, opinions, and the varying stories we tell ourselves about our lives is the key to untangling from them. Trusting ourselves involves figuring out which inner voice we do want to listen to, and that’s made possible when we create the space (through meditation) to hear it.

4. Talk things out.

I know that talking to other people can seem like the opposite of listening to ourselves, but talking to someone can also show us what we’re already thinking.

Have you ever brought an issue to someone only to be relieved when they voiced the thing you were already thinking? I don’t mean the ego-compounding that can result from shared misery—it’s more like realizing what you really want to feel once you hear it from someone else. Talking (or writing) is also a way to organize our thoughts, gain perspective on them, and return to a situation with a new lens.

5. Realize that being a human is not a neutral event.

The situation with my coach is a perfect example of one that can be interpreted differently depending on who’s doing the analyzing. I have no doubt that some of her clients genuinely took this change as a positive one—and were they wrong? Not necessarily.

I simply have certainty that for me, the change wasn’t okay. I allowed myself to choose this boundary and then stand behind it—and in giving ourselves permission to make choices (that can and will be questioned by others) we strengthen a muscle that ultimately makes us who we are: humans with choice, discernment, and individual identities.

**

Ultimately, I’m not suggesting anyone give up on self-help, just like I wouldn’t stop using spoons if someone attacked me with one. (Spoons have been the vehicle for so many delicious things—they’re not to blame for being weaponized!) The gifts of inner work far outweigh the drawbacks; we’ve just got to remain true to ourselves as we sort through the land of self-awareness, responsibility, and thought work.

As Toni Morrison said, “The function of freedom is to free someone else.” I’m convinced that those of us with awareness of these teachings should harness and use them for good; the best healing practitioners are empowering people to heal (and trust) themselves.

I’m also convinced that some of the best breakthroughs in my life have come from my work with incredibly human, imperfect, and fallible teachers and their lessons. Recognizing where their helpfulness stops, and our own boundaries begin, could be the single biggest gift the self-development journey has to give us.

April 19, 2020
When a Wrong Can’t Be Righted: How to Deal With Regret

“Regret can be your worst enemy or your best friend. You get to decide which.” ~Martha Beck

I was lucky enough to grow up with a pretty great mom.

She put herself through nursing school as a single parent, still made it to every field trip and dance recital, and somehow always made my brother and me feel like the best thing since sliced bread (even when we were acting like moldy and ungrateful fruitcakes).

She knew our deepest secrets, our friends, and who we were capable of being—even when we didn’t know ourselves. As I grew older my mom and I had a journal that we would pass back and forth. In it we shared our thoughts and feelings, stories, and fears, as if we didn’t live in the same house and across the hall from each other.

She was my best friend and my “person,” my closest confidante and biggest supporter—but there was, of course, an inevitable down side.

Like anyone who doesn’t know what they have, I often took her for granted.

With age came independence, “worldliness,” and too-cool-for-school-ness. My relationship with my mother took a back seat to friends, romance, and my early-twenties aspirations of moving to LA and becoming rich and famous. (In reality I became an assistant to someone rich and famous, which was exactly close enough to send my self-esteem into a tailspin.)

On trips home I was mostly concerned with seeing friends and popping into old hangouts; she’d be there when I got home, I figured, and she understood… right?

I was young and gregarious, and had more important things to do than spend quality time with my mother. Even after moving back to town I didn’t see her much; the years had seen her fall into a deep depression, and it was one that vividly echoed a growing disappointment in my own life—her pain seemed to only compound mine.

As I began to work on getting my own life back on track, I relegated time with my mother to every other Sunday and holidays, holding her (and our relationship) at arm’s length. What seemed at the time to be self-care and boundaries was also a mixture of avoidance and burden—but I didn’t truly know this until a Tuesday afternoon one day in November.

She’d called me the night before and I’d ignored it; she was lonely and called me a lot, and I’d decided that I couldn’t always stop what I was doing to answer. But the next day I got a call at work from my brother, telling me to come home at once. When I got there I found that she’d died in her sleep the night before.

I checked the voicemail that she’d left me. In it she’d asked me to come over and see a movie with her.

The guilt caved me in.

The following weeks and months were a blur. I was beside myself with grief, regret, and the illogical thinking that can come with loss: Maybe if I’d come over that night she wouldn’t have died. Maybe if I’d been around more, called more, or been a better daughter, maybe that would have changed things.

I recounted my failings and knew there had been many—there usually are, once death takes away the possible tomorrows that you thought you had. Losing her was one thing, but the cloud of regret that hung over my head was entirely different and all encompassing.

It lasted for quite a while.

I didn’t wake up one day and realize that I wasn’t to blame for her death, although I knew how illogical that thought was to others. I also never woke up and felt that the way I acted toward her was entirely right; though fallible and human, I’d consciously been an absentee daughter for quite a while.

But, what did this guilt mean for the rest of my life? Did it mean making myself sick with the never ending replay of all I’d done wrong, or constantly reliving all of the choices I wish I hadn’t made?

As time went on it became apparent that I could literally spend the rest of my life punishing myself. It felt almost fair to carry the weight of regret everywhere that I went. After some time, however, I began to wonder who I was carrying it for.

Was the regret for her, homage to my mother that I could never really repay? Was it for myself, a masochistic comfort that I felt in never truly forgiving my past?

As I contemplated these ideas in the periphery of my mind, I began to take notice of how others repair the damage stemming from guilt and regret.

In recovery communities, when you wrong someone (and realize it) you seek to make it right. You revisit the ill behavior of your past, and (unless it’s going to harm another) you approach the person and ask how to repair things. It may be that financial amends are necessary, it might be taking a restorative action, or it may be that you’re asked to simply leave those you’ve hurt alone—but an effort is made to right the wrong.

And if a wrong can’t possibly be righted (because of death, for example) you make something that’s called a “living amends.”

Another way to look at this is “paying it forward.” Maybe the person that you harmed is gone, but if they were still here, what would you do to make it right? Is there something that you can do for someone else, or another cause, or in memoriam of the person toward whom you committed the harm? Are there things about the way you live that you can change—things you would have implemented with said person, if you’d had the chance?

The idea of a “living amends” intrigued me. Although I knew it couldn’t actually change my past actions, it could definitely change the way that I felt about the future. And anything was better than sitting under a lead blanket of guilt every time I stopped moving long enough to think.

I realized that a huge regret I felt with my mom was the complete disregard I’d had for her time. I came to visit when I felt like it, left when it was good for me, and flaked if I couldn’t “handle” her that day.

I knew that something I could do moving forward would be to show up more consistently in other relationships: make commitments and keep them, respect the time of loved ones, and show with my actions how I felt in my heart.

I also realized that I don’t want to be the kind of person who avoids another’s pain just because it’s difficult for me to bear. Depression is a heavy load to carry, and sitting with a loved one while they’re hurting can be uncomfortable—but sometimes it’s in simply witnessing another’s pain that you can help lighten it.

Boundaries are important, and some of those I drew were necessary, but some were just convenient. I now try to show up even if that’s all I can do, because I know how it feels when another does that for me.

I began to honor her in small ways financially when I could: donating to animal welfare causes that she’d loved, reaching out to my estranged brother, and becoming politically active in ways that I’d never really considered before—all things that would have made her proud.

The tears still came and the past remained unchanged, but as I lived my way to the person she knew I could be, I felt the clouds begin to part and the edges of my grief soften.

As I forged this path of “living amends” I found that it applied to other aspects of my past as well—unchangeable missteps that had kept me wrapped in a blanket of regret began to unfurl into opportunities.

Rather than filling journals with the saga of self-flagellation (which is as ugly as it sounds) I began to ask, “Where can I make this right?” If a wrong (or a relationship) couldn’t be tangibly “righted” there were always other ways that I could live my way toward an amends.

I now look at it as actively applying the lessons that mistakes have taught me—searching for how to make my future actions match the hard-won realizations about who I want to be.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not Mother Teresa, and I don’t wake up each day guided by a strictly altruistic force that leads to a perfect and pious life. (Although that would be nice, I’m still pretty human and a work in progress.)

What I have found, however, is a path of self-forgiveness: ideas, actions, and direction for the moments when I feel myself living in the cave of “if only” and regret.

Although that cave is a familiar place to be, there’s far too much life to be lived in the world outside of it.

February 7, 2018
Why Failed Relationships Aren’t Actually Failures: 5 Lessons on Love That Doesn’t Last

“Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” ~Lord Alfred Tennyson

I’ve always loved relationships—the euphoria of early romance, the comfort of built intimacy, and the experience of adventuring through life with someone else. While there are some pretty snazzy parts of being single, I was a sucker for love from a young age.

Now, I also didn’t meet my fiancé until I was thirty—which means I’ve seen my share of the romantic downside as well. With the highs of love come the lows of romantic breakdown: heartache, loss, and the grief of things not working out. Regardless of how they happen, breakups aren’t easy, and it’s common to think of a relationship’s ending as a failure.

But is it?

The dictionary defines failure as “the nonperformance of success or expectation.” If the point of a relationship is to be together until death do us part (or until we ride off into the sunset and the credits roll) then yes, a breakup is not exactly a success.

But what if that’s not the point? Maybe we can still strive for a love that lasts while reframing our ideas of the loves that didn’t.

The following is a compilation of lessons I’ve learned from my own “failed” relationships, a mixtape of why “failed” love isn’t actually a failure at all.

While our definition of that word may vary, I encourage you to read on with an open mind. There just might be more success in your own past than you previously thought.

1. Relationships teach us about ourselves.

Whenever one of my previous relationships was coming to an end, it usually began with the finding of incompatibilities—disagreements as small as where to eat or as large as whether or not to have kids.

The inconsistencies in beliefs often showed me more about myself than they did the other person. I had to date an atheist to find out how much I really wanted to believe in God. I had to date someone who liked to stay home to realize how much I liked being social. While finding these incompatibilities was anything but fun, in retrospect I see they were a map to finding myself.

2. Relationships show us where we can grow.

There’s a saying that I’ve always liked: “Relationships pour miracle grow on our character defects.” When I was in a relationship that pushed my buttons, I realized which buttons were there to be pushed: things about myself I wouldn’t have noticed until another person made them glaringly apparent.

For example, dating someone with a lot of female friends showed me that I was pretty insecure; while at first his social circle seemed to be the problem (how dare he hang out with other women, right?), over time I realized that it was my own self-esteem that needed attention. Although this “button pusher” relationship didn’t stick, it showed me where my work was.

Through examining my buttons (rather than the button pusher), I was better equipped to do the self-work that would allow me to show up more fully for every future relationship, romantic or not.

3. Relationships allow us to practice vulnerability.

It’s pretty scary to open our hearts up to another person. After all, none of us really know what the future holds, right? Those of us who have experienced our fair share of heartache have even more reason to be cautious: We know what it’s like to lay our hearts out on the line and give someone the option of smashing them to smithereens. (While it’s helpful to avoid this heart-smashing type of relationship, it happens to the best of us, and the possibility is always there.)

Yet, being vulnerable in the face of potential loss is truly the bread and butter of life. Sure, we could play our cards close to our vest and lessen the likelihood of possible harm—but in turn, we also lessen the likelihood of truly being known.

Regardless of how a relationship has ended, when I’ve allowed myself to fully open my heart to another person, I am reminded that it was not a waste at all; it was a brick in the road of living my fullest life.

4. No love is ever wasted.

When in the throes of a relationship, we often have our heart set on not just our partner but on our future with that partner. This is often the hardest thing about a relationship ending: you don’t just lose what you’ve shared, but the imagined future that you’d included the other in.

When that future vanishes, it’s common to look back on the shared past with regret. But what if expressing love, kindness, and shared intimacy is an end in and of itself?

As humans, we love to keep our eyes on the outcome and the finish line but forget that it’s the journey to that mountaintop that shapes us. As the quote above reads, “Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.”

Whether the act of love is in the present or the past, it existed all the same—and if we allow it to do so, it can remind us of the most beautiful side of the human condition.

5. Our past loves played an important role in our lives.

Each person that journeys beside us on the road of life not only shapes who we will become but also how we feel as we get there.

My first love and I moved across the state to pursue our individual dreams. While our relationship didn’t last, we were a safe haven for the other in an unfamiliar and daunting time.

On the flip side, those unhealthy relationships that, on the surface, appear all wrong can help us more wisely choose a partner in the future.

While it would be great to learn lessons from other people’s experiences, most of us have to find out what we want by trial and error—from dating a few (or a bunch) of the wrong people before we can identify the right one. Even the most painful relationships in my past helped me learn who I wanted to be with (as well as who I wanted to be) in the future.

—

Some endings are inevitable. Being able to see the positives in our past doesn’t mean those relationships have any business in our present. It does, however, mean that instead of looking at what we lost when something ended, we can remember what we gained as well: perspective, strength, and experience.

If failure is the nonperformance of success, then let’s demand to expect only growth from ourselves and define success as the amount of love that we gave. Because love is never lost…

It simply changes shape.

October 26, 2017
How To Be Open-Minded When Others See the World Differently

“Most disagreements are caused by different perceptions that created different realities.” ~Unknown

When I was thirteen, I experienced a monumental change in my young life.

It wasn’t a big move, no one close to me died, and although puberty was rocking my world in the worst way, it was something else altogether that shook me to the core:

The movie Titanic came out.

I know, I know, it’s just a movie, and I was just another swooning teenager wishing that I was the one Jack never wanted to let go of, but it hit me hard. Truth, love, the pain of loss: a woman following her heart and risking it all for true love. I relished every second of its three hours and fifteen minute run time.

So much that I saw it multiple times over winter break at school—usually with my equally enamored mom, sometimes with my best friend, always with a lump in my throat. I held back tears as I saw Jack’s face disappearing into the icy waters, always wondering why Rose couldn’t make room for him on the raft, each time imagining myself in the situation: falling in love, making tough choices, persevering through loss.

(Spoiler alert: the ship sinks.)

Returning to school a few weeks later, I knew I’d been changed. Titanic was helping me to sort out the girl I was from the woman I was becoming, and I figured it was having an equal effect on those around me. I was pleasantly surprised when I walked into class on the first day back at school and read an obviously related quote on the white board:

“’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” ~Tennyson

I smiled inside, realizing that my eighth grade teacher must have seen Titanic too, feeling a kindred recognition of just how important this epic film was. After all, it was a sweeping success across the country, breaking records and hearts and box office sales.

As I settled into my seat and he began to lecture, I prepared to listen to what his thoughts were about the film: maybe he had a historical critique, or an interpretation of the film’s depiction of the human condition?

Oh, how wrong I was.

It turns out that the local football team had gone to the super bowl during this same break, and while I was losing it over Jack and Rose, many others were losing it over this team’s big loss.

As my teacher began to lecture and joke with classmates about “the value of making it to the super bowl at all” I hung my head in frustration and confusion. There was a life-changing movie in theatres, cataloguing one of the worst catastrophes in history. Why didn’t anyone care about this? Isn’t this quote on the board far more applicable to a love story than to a football team?

Doesn’t everyone feel the way that I do??

In retrospect, my Titanic example is funny (and somewhat ridiculous). Of course not everyone felt the same soul shaking connection to a movie, and of course not everyone had the newly awakened hormones of a teenage girl. (Say Leeeeoooo with some longing in a whispery voice, and you’ve got my thirteen-year-old daydreams pegged pretty well.)

When we’re that young it’s easy to make major mistakes in our perception of others, but within this comical event are the seeds of an issue that would continue to show up, both in my life and others.

There’s Imperfection in Perception

My misinterpretation of a teacher’s quote on the board is an early mistake in “encoding” and “decoding.” Those two words are just fancy talk for the complicated interaction that is communication, and how they’re related to something called the “confirmation bias.”

See, when I read those words on the white board, they confirmed something that I (unconsciously) assumed to be true: everyone cared about this thing that I did (ahem, Titanic, cough) and of course this quote about love must relate to it. The words on the board spoke to me in a way that I thought was universal: my thirteen-year-old brain knew exactly what they meant.

When words are spoken, however (or written on a white board in eighth grade), the intention of the communicator can get lost in the understanding. When I say something to you, I’m “encoding” information that I want to communicate; I’m trying to get you to understand me.

The trouble comes when we forget that each person understands (or “decodes”) information differently—we hear what we know, we hear what we want, and we hear what makes sense based on our life thus far.

See, this variability in perception happens because each of us views the world through a slightly different lens. What the word “love” means to me could be different than what it means to you; for example, what has the word “love” meant in the past? Has it been controlling or unconditional, loaded with expectations or adoration?

The actual words we use are simply a jumping off place, and then they’re strung together in beads of sentences that can appear a different color to each person listening. The “colors” (or meaning) we assign to words vary because all of us do; and because our minds are expert categorizers, we often understand things in a way that already makes sense with our existent worldview.

It’s for this reason that two people can read the same news article and come away with different interpretations, or feel entirely different about the events going on in the world: We tend to pay attention to information that confirms what we already believe to be true, and disregard the rest of what we see. It’s not due to callousness either; it’s the way that we’re wired.

Our brains are really good at simplifying and organizing. In order to cognitively make sense of a complicated and busy world, we have to become expert categorizers. This is adaptive, and it helps our overworked brains make sense of things.

The hiccups only come when we forget that the way we’ve organized the world is different than the way that others have; when we assume that each person interprets the world and its events the way that we do.

So, what do we do? If everyone could mean something different when they say “I love you” or “let’s go get some ice cream” then how on earth are we ever supposed to understand each other? Is all social coherence lost?

The answer is simple, but not easy: We must keep an open (and present) mind.

Open-mindedness

Keeping an open mind is realizing that we all perceive the world that we live in differently. It’s remembering that when we read (or listen) we are “decoding” at the same time—trying to understand and make sense of information, all through our unique and limited worldview.

It’s being patient when we feel misunderstood, and allowing for the possibility that we’re also misunderstanding others.

Open-mindedness is being forgiving of people who hold different opinions and reminding ourselves that we’ve really only ever been one person; we don’t necessarily know what the world is like for others.

Being open-minded is another form of mindfulness, really. It’s pausing before responding, and asking ourselves: What do I already believe to be true about this person, this event, this political party? What in my past is causing me to feel agitated, or generous, or suspicious? What does the person speaking to me actually mean?

Even if we don’t always have the answers, simply allowing the questions to percolate our perception can open us up to the world around us.

Not having answers also gives us the chance to ask questions; if we don’t know what someone means by a statement, we can ask them to clarify. If that’s not an option (because who likes to feed trolls on the internet, right?) then can we at least hold space for a worldview that varies from ours?

Even if we don’t agree with it, even if it makes our blood boil, can we pause while we try to understand it? Slow down our categorizing minds and realize that the world looks different from varying angles?

It’s difficult to pause when we’re agitated, but it’s definitely possible. Practicing mindfulness in communication (whether it’s with a loved one or a stranger on the internet) can give us space to ask these questions, extend our understanding, and allow for differences.

Listening to an idea with an open mind is letting go of all the reasons it’s wrong, or right, and allowing the person (or words) to be what they are. It’s digesting things with the knowledge that we’re bringing our own “stuff” to the table; keeping in mind that our history colors each and every interaction we have.

It’s a complicated world that we navigate, and there are benefits to the assumptions we jump to minute by minute. But in order to sift through assumptions we’ve first got to be aware of them, and that involves being vigilant of our monkey minds as often as possible. It involves pausing, taking a breath, and asking ourselves: Is this person talking about Titanic, or football?

October 8, 2017
Take a Chance: Don’t Let Your Inner Saboteur Hold You Back

“’It’s impossible,’ said pride. ‘It’s risky,’ said experience. ‘It’s pointless,’ said reason. ‘Give it a try,’ whispered the heart.” ~Unknown

On my first day back in college, I sat on a bench outside a classroom and wrote in a tiny notebook. Glancing around at the young students lining up, my sunglasses slid down my nose as I hurriedly scribbled the thoughts buzzing around in my head.

“I’m afraid of being unprepared. I’m afraid of not being smart enough. I’m afraid of being left behind in the coursework. I’m afraid of giving up like I did last time.”

As evidenced in that journal entry, I was pretty terrified to be back in school.

I felt too old, too far behind, too unsure of why I was even trying in the first place. Wasn’t it too late to “catch up” anyway? Weren’t all of my friends already done with their bachelors, done even with their graduate degrees, forging careers and buying houses and doing those things that we all say we’ll do when we grow up? Hadn’t I made my bed when I gave up college the first time?

Really I just knew that it was too late to catch up to the one person I’d been chasing my whole life.

She was magnificent, really. This person had gone to college when she was “supposed” to, had since forged a meaningful career path, hadn’t wasted years in bad relationships and bad behaviors. She’d chased her dreams and flossed her teeth, run marathons and won awards, had tons of friends and confidence and was now living wealthy and successful and madly in love…

…all cozied up inside my head.

That person was the woman I “wished” I was, and she was making my life a living hell. My constant comparison to the ghost life that I should have led would stop me in my tracks as I began to take steps toward goals: You’ll never be who you could have been, so why even try?

It’s for this reason that my return to school was a surrender of sorts.

A surrender to my inner perfectionist, the one who told me that if I didn’t do it “perfectly” or at the time other people had done it (whatever “it” was), then I shouldn’t do it at all.

The perfectionist who told me it was too late, that I would fail, that trying to be successful (like really trying) was the surest way to feel badly in the near future. My inner shame cranker, my saboteur, the voice that was easiest to hear throughout all the static of daily life.

Signing up for my first college class was waving the white flag at her door. It was saying, “Yes, I am imperfect, things didn’t go the way that I planned, but I may as well try.”

So I showed up for one class and then two, glancing sideways at my classmates that were often far younger and seemingly more prepared.

The first few weeks I felt like an awkward dinosaur, struggling to keep up and too nervous to raise my hand in class. As time went on, though, I began to get braver, approaching teachers with questions and relaxing around my classmates.

When I opened my eyes a little wider I was forced to realize that I wasn’t actually all that different from the other people taking classes. Sure, most were younger, but some were older; some were strikingly intelligent but others were asking me for help. As I kept showing up and diligently doing the assigned work, I found that I actually felt pretty good.

I liked seeing A’s on my papers, but what I liked even more was the feeling growing inside of me. Each week that I showed up for class was another week that I hadn’t given up; each time I raised my hand was another time I didn’t listen to the voice that told me my question was stupid.

The weeks flew by and before I knew it, that first semester had passed. I felt like I’d completed my own marathon, the one I was running with myself, and decided to push the finish line a little further away. One more semester became two, then three, and soon I was preparing to transfer to a university.

My “I-can-do-it” train had gathered steam, and although I would sometimes falter with the difficulty of the courses, the train never totally stopped. My small victories had accumulated for long enough that I began to trust myself: to learn, to grow, to continue.

It took me longer than four years, but this past June I did in fact graduate.

As I sat in a stadium surrounded by hundreds of bobbing graduation caps, I took a moment to remember that girl who had sat on a bench outside her first college class. The one who had written about how scared she was, how sure of failing, how inadequate she knew herself to be. I realized that she was the same person sitting in a cap and gown, smiling with excitement and preparing to cross a stage and be handed a diploma.

The only difference was time spent proving the fearful voice wrong.

Sure, I’ll never compare to the perfectionist inside of me. She’s definitely still there and she still crops up sometimes, trying to convince me not to take that chance or venture out onto another limb; whispering in my ear that I’m not doing it right and I’m sure to embarrass myself anyway.

You know what I’ve figured out, though? I don’t have to listen to her. None of us do. (My inner perfectionist gets around. I told you she’s popular, so I’m assuming she’s in your head too.)

The voices inside all of us no doubt serve a purpose, but sometimes that purpose is just to keep us safe.

“Don’t take that chance; you could fail” protects our ego from the pain of disappointment. “Don’t expect much from yourself; you aren’t capable” means that we don’t have to get our hopes up. The flip side of that, though, is pushing through those thoughts and doing things anyway.

Taking that class. Going on that trip around the world. Applying for that job or writing that book or telling someone about an idea you have.

Not listening to the negative voices in our head begins with first realizing that they’re in there; they’ve often been playing on repeat for so long that they blend in with the soundtrack of our mind. They feel like us, but they’re not: they’re no more us than that ghost life is—the one that we wish we had led, the one that never existed in the first place.

If there’s one thing that my return to college taught me, it’s that the surest way to drown out the doubt in my head is to put one foot in front of the other and prove it wrong. Thank that doubtful naysayer for her opinion, suggest she get back to being perfect, and go forth with whatever it is that will make this actual life even a little better.

I’d say it’s time we all did that; bid those lame perfectionists farewell and live the imperfect and real lives that we were actually meant to live anyway.

July 16, 2017